It all started when the Rainbow Fairy descended upon me. Or maybe it was the Lucky Charms leprechaun. I grew my hair down to my ankles, and it blew perpetually in the breeze, a repetitive waving movement that mirrored the dance of my almost diaphanous muslin sundress. Jed and I packed up the family, bought a bunch of goats, and moved to a cabin on a verdant pastureland perched at the top of a mountain. We taught Levi how to hunt and Adelaide how to weave. Rays of sunshine warmed the field of grain in my backyard. Beside it, I floated through rows of gnarled branches, picking plump, ripe peaches from our well-tended trees. Overflowing hand-woven baskets in hand, I made my way, barefooted, down the daisy-lined path towards our simply outfitted kitchen where I would spend the entire day preparing special, even magical, food for my dearest infant. Just outside the door, I patted the family cow. Once inside, I removed the chickens from the countertops and began readying all the contraptions I would need for a long day of cooking.
 |
The trick is not gobbling up
all these pears yourself. |
Actually, I have no idea why I had this preconceived notion that preparing your own baby food meant that you had to be a certain kind of person with nothing else to do and who placed a highly aggrandized sense of importance on granola living at the cost of practicality. Some of the ideas I mentioned in my silly story are actually things I wouldn't mind pursuing, but for now, I'm just making baby food. And for this busy mom who sometimes feeds my family peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, it was shockingly
easy. As in, EASY. Let me break it down further. It was cheap, it required minimal utensils, minimal effort, minimal time, and minimal clean-up. I used to think of it as this foreign idea espoused by hippies and celebrities like Nicole Richie who have so much money they aren't sure what to do with themselves. Let's just say I'm not usually "that mom," whoever she is. But here's what really happened.
 |
| Ready-to-eat sweet potatoes. |
I opened the front door and saw a package from Amazon.com. It wasn't a holiday or anyone's birthday, which made it that much more exciting, and having torn into it with the glee of a dieter permitted a daily chocolate, I found a book sent from my awesome sister-in-law. It was full of recipes for making baby food, and glancing through it, I realized how doable it really was. Doable, preservative-free, and cheap. You buy some veggies or fruit, you cook them for a bit, you blend them up with a bit of liquid (usually water), you pour the puree into ice cube trays, you let them freeze, then you pop them out into a freezer bag. Suddenly you have a bag full of healthy, easy meals for your little one.
 |
| Pureed Pears |
I made the sweet potatoes first, and a total of 22 cubes, the equivalent of 11 small jars, cost me $2.00. I then made the peas (in the thirty minutes Saturday morning that Jed was cooking breakfast), producing the same amount for
less than $2.00. Last night, I made pears, and that cost me $3.00. It really does take so little time, too. And for ease of clean-up, Jed and I gave away our giant blender and bought a handheld one commonly used for smoothies. I throw the food in a big mixing bowl and use the hand blender on them. It's a lot easier to clean than a big blender, and storage in our small kitchen is a cinch.
I've received some interesting revelation through the process, too. I'm cooking these foods at the simplest level with nothing added, allowing each item to stand on its own in all of its individual, flavorful glory. They are all bright and colorful, rather than the gray-ish tone some jarred foods take, and they taste purely delicious, and I mean really, really delicious. Have you ever tried your baby's jarred food? If it tastes metally or chemically, why do we blame them for refusing some of it? The organic stuff is pretty good, though, and follows the same principles of simplicity that I'm talking about here. I'll certainly buy some jars as Adelaide gets older or if I run out of cubes and haven't made any more. And Levi ate jarred baby food, some organic, some not, and he's turned out fine. In fact, he's a fabulous eater. So I'm not spurning the use of jarred food, just elucidating how remarkably simple it is to make your own.
 |
| Look how bright they are! |
And seeing how simple and pure and basic and healthy Adelaide's food is has helped me to reconsider once again the food we put in our own mouths. Jed came home right as I was pureeing her sweet potatoes. He looked at the amount, tried a bite, heard the cost, and announced jokingly that perhaps that's what we all should be eating. I think he's right. I did make us some, and while I absolutely put a few tabs of butter, a touch of brown sugar, and a dash of cinnamon in them, I kept it minimal, moreso than I thought necessary in the past, and they were great. That reminds me of one more helpful tidbit. As long as your baby's doctor doesn't condemn it for your particular wee one, add the tiniest amounts of common spice to your baby's food when you're serving it.
Not salt! But I added a touch of garlic or cinnamon or pepper to Levi's food when he was around 10 months old to acclimate him to the types of flavors he'll often find in our household, and he had no problem switching to the more complex flavors of family meals when the time came.
 |
| Adelaide loves it! |
We mommies tend to all the details of our families' lives, and as we eat about three times a day, what we feed our broods is nearly always on mind: what to put on the grocery list this week, what's frugal, what will be quick for those nights that we're busy, what's on sale or in season, what will create good eating habits in our kids, what will keep mom and dad from getting fat, what to fix right now, what will be a special favorite that will excite everyone that day, what's for dinner, and on and on. This discovery about making baby food has been, for me, an exciting one.
Big thanks to Jennifer Pham for opening my eyes. If you're interested in trying it yourself, hippie lifestyle optional, the book is called
Baby Love, and I'm sure you could also find individual recipes online.
Happy pureeing!
No comments:
Post a Comment